Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

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> subverting the IETF is a little like subverting the Linux kernel --- doable, but bad tradecraft

This is a great point. The mailing list and public nature of the standards process makes it very difficult to subvert, without very high risks of getting caught and breaking trust in the community. These agencies need to keep hiring good cryptographers and ideally keep bodies working on standards.

Shows the importance of OSS in security and having people like Trevor Perrin keeping watch.

But at the same time - if the NSA was going to subvert encryption standards - I doubt they would subvert the process with someone who is known to work at the NSA. Intelligence agencies would operate covertly. Most likely by converting someone trusted in the community into an agent, or grooming their own agent straight out of high school/university and getting them to a point of influence in the community (over a long period of time) and only then having them damage crypto standards. < this is standard tradecraft.

Bullshit. Subverting the Linux kernel would easily be within the capabilities of the NSA.

Kernel contributors aren't background-checked so all you need to do is to pay someone to do some legitimate kernel hacking in a sensitive area. Then in one of their commits slip in a backdoor.

"But noooo the many eyes will see the backdoor!" you say.

This is clearly false. If it were true Linux would have no security bugs at all. Since old security bugs continue to be found, it follows that it is possible to have a security bug that goes unnoticed for many years. See also the underhanded C contest.

Hell maybe it has already happened. Who is to say the latest Linux security bug wasn't deliberately introduced by the NSA?

I don't think this is paranoia - it would be fairly easy for the NSA to do, very useful and almost completely deniable. I would do it if I were them. They certainly wouldn't not do it for moral reasons because they've shown they don't really have any.

So there's nothing which keeps you from assuming Linux kernel wouldn't be backdoored by NSA, right?

correct.

> Kernel contributors aren't background-checked so all you need to do is to pay someone to do some legitimate kernel hacking in a sensitive area

People vastly overestimate the worth of background checks, and underestimate the effect of current hardship.

But if people are going to use the argument that they'd never use an NSA employee to subvert encryption standards, as you are doing here, that clears them to do just that.

Furthermore, before the Snowden revelations, they weren't under suspicion for trying to do that.

I see what you're saying, but it still doesn't make sense not to use someone with no visible ties. If you're going to go that deep, you would use the official employee as a red herring. You don't even want people to think about the possibility of your real guy being an agent, even in this weird convoluted way.

On the one hand, a background check should reject anyone with such a visible a conflict of interest; On the other IETF is full of U.S. nationals, so it's only trustable for countries with common interests with the U.S. Either way, the IETF reputation will be exactly constant before or after a decision is made.

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